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Disclaimer

Let it be known, long and far across all distant lands. This blog is totally independant from Microsoft and any other company or organisation and this blog (not the people) is not affiliated with Microsoft at all.

A lot of people have been waiting months for this day, when sometime in the 9′ clock hour, Beta 2 of Version 2 was released! This groundbreaking release for DPM has so much to offer which hasn’t been previously announced. If you ever thought about DPM and maybe weren’t as impressed in the past, even as recently as Beta 1, you MUST revisit your decision. Some of the brand-new features include file protection support for XP and Vista machines (domain joined), protection of Virtual Server’s configuration AND *running* virtual machines, Windows Sharepoint 2.0 and 3.0 (3.0 natively, 2.0 through SQL backup), SQL 2000 (natively, yes! – not previously going to be supported, but with recent development now is – of course, 2005 was already previously natively supported in beta 1), all kinds of Exchange stuff including CCRs and other things beyond my knowledge, System State, and much more!

Â Including, what I want to announce to the whole WORLD!!!!!! You do NOT need to add a whole disk to the DPM storage pool anymore! There is now what is called “Custom Volumes”, where you can create your own seperate partitions for the replica and recovery point areas, which then you specify for each PG/workload. This means you are now able to have 1, count them ONE, hard drive to run DPM! 🙂 I know there are tons of people out there who even wanted to just *test and try* DPM, but couldn’t because they didn’t have the hardware requirement of 2 HDs…. not anymore, test to your hearts content!

Â Oh, and BTW, there is a bug bash contest going on for Beta 2 – see Connect for details. Also, the beta is public, so that means anyone can still join the beta on Connect even to this day.

Â Look for a lot of posts to come about DPM – most of the content covered in detail you will only find written by me! 🙂

There has been a great response to the SP1 beta signup! 🙂 Congrats on all those who emailed dpmtb[at]microsoft.com to sign up for the beta of Service Pack 1. The signup period has now closed due to reaching the maximum number of people.

Through a very trusted friend of mine who emailed a public DPM address, I have come to know that the DPM V2 is planning on being open to the public as was V1. I bet this means SP1 will be public also (which I expected in the first place).

Â Although the plan may be for it to be public right now, it could change in the future. Assuming it will be public though, it is almost 100% certain that the first details of the signup will be posted to the DPM web site at http://www.microsoft.com/dpm. – Check there often for any new details!

Hi everyone! DPM has released an email address to email if you are interested in joining the normalÂ DPM SP1 or specialty V2 TAP beta. . . . there isn’t an email address for the normal V2 beta. The email address is: “dpmtb[at]microsoft.com”!

Quote from source:

“Among the exsiting DPM V1 customers we are looking for customers who want to participate in our beta for Service Pack 1.Â

SP1 enables:Â

protection of 64 bit production serversÂ Â

protection of production servers with Single Instance Store (SIS) enabledÂ Â

Be sure to visit the Microsoft CFS Team Blog to see other great articles onÂ file services and storage features in Windows Server, Windows XP, and Windows Vista — be sure to leave comments too — they’re a really cool bunch of people (shameless plug — I’m one of their MVPs 😉 — but really, you should check it out)

Well, you are about to get the latest info on the beta & release timeframe of DPM’s first Service Pack. . . . . Karan has stated in the newsgroups:

Â “The release time frame for SP1 is early summer of this year.”

Also about the beta build(s) of SP1: “There *might* be some paperwork (NDA) involved as this will be unreleased software. ”

Â What does the NDA quote mean? Probably means that it may/may not be a private beta.

For everyone interested, SP1 will have the ability to *protect* x64 file servers, but the ability for the *DPM Server* to run x64 will be presented in V2. I sure hope that Virtual Server comes up to bat with x64 guest OSes by the time of V2’s beta!

Have questions? Drop a comment here or in the DPM NG at microsoft.public.dataprotectionamanger…

The biggest commitment to what will be in V2 of DPM and the timeframe was just posted in the NG. It is now officially confirmed that V2 will have multi-domain support (not to mention the already known SQLÂ & Exchange support)! As far as the timeline of RTM? – 2nd half of 2007. Direct quote from Karan:

“…the next release of DPM is in H2 of 2007. We will have the beta
version with Exchange and SQL support (including support for multiple
domains) by summer of this year. Given where we are in the development
cycle, it is hard to give more exact dates.”

Â Did you read that closely? – Beta version “by summer of this year”!!! 🙂 Does that statement mean literally BY this summer (meaning pre-summer) or ‘by the end’? My gut level response would be somewhere DURING summer and not before, as it seems very early for another beta. But even if it occured late summer, that still is 1 year or more until RTM in 2007! What does this mean? – My guess, private beta.

Several people are reporting an issue with the DPM File Agent’s service starting/stopping after applying recent hotfixes. The symptoms are in the event logs and resemble:

DPM File Agent service entered a running state.
DPM File Agent service was successfully sent a start control.
DPM File Agent service entered the stopped state.

This behavior occurs on a frequent and definitely not designed basis.

Anyone experiencing this problem should add a comment to this post and/or post in the DPM NG with details at microsoft.public.dataprotectionmanager… or the web UI through the Community page at microsoft.com/dpm. Please specify whether you recently installed any DPM or other product hotfixes. Thanks!

Hot off the press! New patch correcting Short File Name collusion and access denied errors in DPM! The KB article isn’t live quite yet, but you can get the patch by calling in FREE to Product Support Services and asking for the patch related to QFE 911169.

What the symptoms look like:

#1 Access Denied Error in DPM UI

#2 For the more beefy details, I’ll leave it to my trusted friend, Karan, from DPM: 🙂

“The problem occurs because during a consistency check, both the long name
and the short name of each file must match. Short names are assigned
according to the order in which they are created. Therefore, the short names
of the files on the destination server may not match the short names of the
files on the source server. For example, this problem occurs in the
following scenario: . The LongFileName02.txt file is created on the source
server. The short name of the LongFileName02.txt file is LongFi~1.txt.
. The LongFileName01.txt file is created on the source server. The
short name of the LongFileName01.txt file is LongFi~2.txt.
. A consistency check is run. The files are validated by using the
long name in alphabetical order. The LongFileName01.txt file is validated
first.
. A LongFileName01.txt file is created on the replica. This file is
given the LongFi~1.txt short name.
. During the next synchronization, the LongFileName02.txt file is
created. The short name of this file is LongFi~2.txt.
In this scenario, the short names of LongFileName02.txt and
LongFileName01.txt are exchanged.

The next time that you run a consistency check, the synchronization fails
because the long name and the short name of each file do not match.
Therefore, the replica remains inconsistent with the source server.

I would recommend installing this hotfix on all DPM servers in production
where you are seeing this problem.”